Education

LabJogos offers 6 courses in the Specialization on Games at Técnico Lisboa and holds several Master Thesis and research projects in the fields of Games and Interactive Experiences.

It also promotes the creation of multidisciplinary teams. To do so it has an old connection (2013) with Belas-Artes (ULisboa Art School), allowing projects with greater quality by mixing the programmers and artists from these two institutions. More recently (2019), bonds with the Bachelor’s Degree in Industrial Engineering and Management were made, allowing not only the creation of a game but also of the exploration of its impact in the market.

Courses

Artificial Intelligence in Games

Understand the differences between traditional AI and AI applied to game development, where other factors such as playability are more relevant that the oponent’s intelligence level. Be familiar with the practical problems when developing AI for video games, and with the several techniques applied in comercial video games. Know how to design and build an AI system for a video game independently of its genre (action, sport, strategy, narrative).

Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems

To acquire general notions about agents and multi-agent systems; knowing how to identify and classify agents and environments, according to different properties. Knowing how to develop complex systems and systems from different application areas, using an agent-oriented methodology. Knowing how to define a society of agents in order to solve a specific problem. Being able to design agents with reactive, deliberative and hybrid architectures. Being able to create societies of agents that communicate, in a practical way, using suitable languages and platforms.

Computer Graphics for Games

This course covers both theory and practice of game engine software development. It delves into the different engine subsystems including, but not limited to, rendering, character animation, and physics, and details the articulation required to support gameplay development. By the end of this course, students should understand how modern game engines work, and be able to design and develop their own game engines.

Game Design

This course grants the students the opportunity to develop their skills on experience design and prototyping for games. The learning process is sustained in the discussion of what is a game, what are its components and what is its relation to the players (having in mind their differences). It is expected that the student develop design documents and prototypes to support his/her work on the course.

Game Development Methodology

Present a vision of the different methodologies and technologies involved in the development of digital games discussing the main features and issues in each one. Grant students with conceptual tools and techniques to develop user interfaces for games with special emphasis on player controls. Develop the ability to reflect and test the player experience and gameplay. Discuss the role of conceptual modelling and user testing. Highlight the importance to take a user centred approach in the exploration of the player experience.

Multimedia Content Production

Know the different types of multimédia information and how to manipulate them to poduce multimedia content. To understand the technological constraints that affect Production. To understand critical factors affect the success of a production, namely in aspects such as capture, encoding, processing and visualization of the different media. To know the different kinds of available authoring tools. To create Multimedia contents; To identify the different contexts in which multimedia can be consumed, with emphasys on online and network issues (evaluate bandwidth, latency, synchronization, etc.) and mobile devices. Introduce some advanged multimedia usages such as procedural modelling, generative art augmented reality. Apply efficient methods of multimedia content retrieval.

Thesis

Design of a tactical turn-based game for mobile devices

  • Ricardo André Machado da Silva
  • Carlos Martinho (Advisor)
  • Pedro Santos (Advisor)
  • 2016
  • Finished
  • tactical
  • turn-based
  • mobile-devices
  • strategy
  • mobile-game
  • user-interface

With the mobile games market growing by the day, more and more gamers are shifting to mobile platforms. Most of the games, however, are very simplistic, which leads to non interesting gameplay for veteran players, or are ports of preexisting games, which leads to poor interfaces and user experience. This project focuses on the second problem, trying to understand what the best user interface/user experience is in tactical turn based games for mobile platforms.

MiniPool: Real-time artificial player for a 8-Ball video game

  • David Gonçalo Branco da Silva
  • Rui Prada (Advisor)
  • 2015
  • Finished
  • video-games
  • artificial-player
  • billiards
  • 8-ball
  • stochastic-game
  • real-time

The importance of artificial intelligence in games has been growing over the years due to their continuous increasing realism and the need to keep their immersiveness while playing. Games like 8-Ball offer many interesting challenges to both communities of AI and optimization duo to the continuous and stochastic characteristics of the domain. To succeed a player must be able o plan the best sequence of shots and execute a shot with accuracy and precision, so he doesn’t lose the turn. There are already several good artificial players developed, however they tend to take more than 30 seconds to select and executed a shot. Under normal circumstances a player would give up playing the game if he had to wait that long to play. In this document I propose a real-time solution for a 8-Ball artificial player using a Monte-Carlo Expectimax hybrid search algorithm with raytracing techniques.